Free A Melancholic Black Series (Book 1): The Red Door by R.J. Scriber

that’s going to work.
    “Mack!” Rodney shouts as Amberly runs from the darkness and tackles his boss to the floor. Her shrieks echo loudly as she slams his head in to the concrete over and over repeatedly. Turning his skull to candy and his brain, puree.
    Nothing better than the basement’s concrete floor to tenderize the meat you’re planning on eating.
    She raises her hand to slash Mack and rip him in half when she accidentally hits the chain that is keeping Rodney prisoner, breaking it cleanly. Ripping it like paper. Her power is truly awesome. Just like how excited Mack was before opening the basement door, so is Amberly at the aspect of tearing something apart with her bare, little hands.
    Rodney slowly crawls to the steps as he turns back around to see Amberly completely tearing Mack apart from head to toe. She couldn’t devour him quicker if she tried. Her smiles of bliss are only exceeded by her unbridled fury.
    As for Rodney, you will be remembered Mack for your sacrifice.
     
    Rodney crawls out of the basement on his hands and knees through the doorway as Nell stands there holding a gun pointed directly at him. She’s crying and hurt. Not physically but mentally.
    “Nell?” Rodney asks cautiously.
    “Dannalee.”
    Rodney’s eyes widen. “Who?” he asks playing coy.
    “Just, answer me, Rodney!” she screams, cocking the gun.
    “Where did you get that?”
    “From a cop.”
    “Cop? You… killed a cop?!”
    “Dannalee!”
    “What, are you going to shoot me now?”
    “If you don’t answer the question, I will.”
    Rodney pauses. He believes her. There’s nothing he can do. Down in the basement is a flesh-eating, demon-child who seemingly has crawled from the depths of Hell itself, and in front of him is a pissed-off wife. He’s contemplating which is worse.
    “You’ve been sleeping with her?” Nell asks, helping Rodney along the way to the truth.
    “Not sleeping,” he responds much to her surprise.
    “Why?”
    “I had… I was bored .”
    The love she had for Rodney and trust, seems to pour from her drained face with such ferocity, she could kill him. Not to say that she hasn’t made up her mind. “Bored? You dirty asshole ! I’ve done everything in my life for you! For you!”
    “I thought I wanted this ,” Rodney lies. “When we were younger. The lives we had. I thought this was always what was planned for me. Thought this is what we deserved. I learned, it wasn’t. It just wasn’t , Nell. I’m sorry.” It’s the most sincere Rodney has been in months.
    Nell is trying to process everything. She’s confused, when a sudden moment of clarity comes over her. She looks up at Rodney, her face covered in disdain. “This woman, Mack said months.”
    “Okay?”
    “Was…?” Nell asks before she gets a lump in her throat, holding back her emotions and tears. “Was she the reason you never picked up Amberly? Why, why she died?”
    That’s Rodney’s dirty little secret he never wanted anyone to know. The fucked-up truth. The revelation that struck Nell like a bolt of lightning. What Amberly knew all along. At that moment his own daughter was being raped and murdered by someone she knew and trusted, he was getting laid. He chose the sin of adultery over his own daughter.
    He stares at Nell in the eyes as he admits, “I won’t answer.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you already know the answer.”
    Nell heartbreakingly smiles with a tear in her eye as aims the gun and shoots Rodney straight in his heart. He falls flat down against the wall he was resting on. The look of shock forever implanted on his face. She shouts in frustration as she empties the rest of the bullets in the clip into Rodney; all 11 of them. Never aiming at one direct spot, instead, letting them spray all over. She felt that her didn’t deserve precision.
    After the smoke settles, Nell falls to her knees. As if now, of all times, she accepts all the things she’s been doing. Only, she doesn’t care.
    The